Nate Eppler has won The American Theatre Critics Association’s (ATCA) 2017 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award for an emerging playwright. The award was presented at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville on April 8. Eppler’s work The Ice Treatment premiered in July of 2016 and was presented by Actors Bridge Ensemble […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out“) Sometimes a brave decision by a director or a dramaturg can enhance or expand the original intent of a playwright’s work. Blind color casting works in many instances for classic works by Shakespeare and Moliere, for example, because the color of the actor’s skin has nothing to […]
By ALAN SMASON, THEATRE CRITIC, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out“) One of the funniest comedic sketches on Saturday Night Live entailed the reading of the secret Nixon Watergate tapes in which the serious Nixon is seen to be fully cognizant that there are people listening in and he is playing to the audience. “A million? We could […]
By ANNE SIEGEL Broadway isn’t the only place currently producing Williams’ early play, The Glass Menagerie. The Milwaukee Repertory Theatre just opened an excellent production in the largest of its three theaters, the Quadracci Powerhouse Theater. The theater got part of its name – Powerhouse – from the fact that the complex resides in a […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out”) By all things reasonable, Waitress, the Broadway musical currently serving its fare at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in New York, should have never made it to Broadway. It is a story of improbabilities. The musical was based on an independent film directed by Adrienne Shelly, a striking […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out”) There is a point in the second act of the current production of Jefferson Performing Arts Society’s “West Side Story” where the Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim musical merges into the ethereal Jerome Robbins ballet. The central story of star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria, which we have […]
![Courtney as Marilyn 2[2]](http://www.crescentcityjewishnews.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Courtney-as-Marilyn-22.jpg)
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out”) With its current production Pictures of Marilyn now playing weekends at BB’s Stage Door Canteen, the National World War II Museum has taken a bold step in a new theatrical direction. Courtney Boe, the blonde Victory Belle who has been a leading player in several previous productions including […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out”) There is an overwhelming tendency in Lisa D’Amour’s Airline Highway for characters to talk over one another. This is apparently how our native daughter hears the conversations of the real life New Orleans figures upon whom she has based her fictional account. In her stage directions she […]